


Sunshine

by screamingsongbird16



Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Cuddling, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Just friends for now, mini angels, sleepy spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 05:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7209188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingsongbird16/pseuds/screamingsongbird16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into how the two youngest spies became friends, and a glimpse at how they fell in with the rest of the D-Agency boys.  With a side of fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> After the trauma of yesterday's episode, I thought that we could all use something fluffy and adorable to help us start the healing process. So here I give you more Hatano and Jitsui cuddling in their sleep like kittens!

 

 

            In spy training, speaking of their pasts was strictly prohibited.  But Jitsui wouldn’t have wanted to talk about his anyway. 

            Not because he had skeletons in his closet.  Or shadows, as he could tell at least half of the group which eventually became his friends did.  All in all, he’d had a nice, happy childhood.  Just . . . not in Japan.

            He’d been born in Japan, but his parents moved to Hawaii when he was three, to work in the sugar cane fields.  They’d taken him with them, and so he grew up in the land of the free, with an education untainted by imperialist propaganda, where the sun shined bright every day.  Climate wise, Hawaii was a tropical paradise.  It wasn’t a perfect place.  But it was a good place, and he was happy there. 

            He never knew what it was to be cold until he moved back to Japan.  His grandparents and his two oldest uncles on his father’s side all fell ill and died in the same winter, and so his father inherited the family farm.  Jitsui was thirteen then.  Old enough not to fall to the sway of all the crazy talk about the emperor being a living god on earth, and how righteous and honorable it was to enlist and throw your life away in his name.  Smart enough to know not to say as much, in a land full of fanatics who were all buying into it. 

            His Japanese was fluent and he spoke it without an American accent, since it truly was his first language.  The only language he could communicate with his parents with.  He knew all the same material his classmates knew, courtesy of his reading addiction, so he wasn’t behind in classes.  But still, he stood out. 

            “The American,” they called him, whispering behind their hands, like that really blocked their words from his ears. 

            Jitsui did everything he could to acclimatize himself to the culture.  After his tan, acquired from years of soaking in sunshine faded, and his skin paled to lily white, he was indistinguishable from any native who’d spent their whole life in Japan.  But they never let him forget that he hadn’t. 

            He grew used to the cold.  Even got to the point where he stopped missing the Hawaiian sun so desperately.  He learned how to swim in an ocean that was never warm, not even in summer, and how to brave the snow storms that were thick enough to white out whole cities in the winter.  Within two years, the only time he was really bothered by the cold anymore was at night.  Then, lying down, his body inactive and his blood circulating slowly, a chill never failed to sweep over him during the nights, from autumn, all through winter, and partway into spring.  He shivered uncontrollably in his sleep, even after piling on the blankets and curling into a ball to try to conserve heat.

 

* * *

 

            It was in the winter when the silver haired man with the cane showed up at his school.  Jitsui didn’t think anything suspicious of his arrival, or his wish to speak with him.  Lately he’d been getting a lot of visitors from a lot of different colleges.  His test scores were the best in his class.  Not just his book learning classes, but his physical fitness test scores too.  All the visitors wanted him to attend the universities, colleges, or academies that they represented.  And they all ended up sounding the same.  But the silver haired man, one Lt. Colonel Yuuki, he was different.

            He didn’t approach Jitsui with some grandiose speech about being the best he could be for the sake of their divine emperor, or how noble a pursuit it would be to die for the great Japanese empire.  Yuuki engaged him in a conversation about politics.  Particularly the disarmment summit in Washington, where Japan had been made a complete mockery of.  He sounded out Jitsui’s opinion about espionage.  Their conversation turned to The Art of War and Sun Tsu’s views on spies.  And in the end, Yuuki gave Jitsui an invitation.  One that Jitsui accepted.

 

            Yuuki hadn’t warned him going into the program that he would be one of the youngest there.  But then, if Jitsui succeeded in becoming a spy, he’d end up going into many worse situations without information that was even more crucial.  So it was good practice.

            There was no one else Jitsui’s own age there.  Everyone else looked like a recent college graduate.  Except one boy who Jitsui guessed was a little bit younger than him.  Hatano.

            From the start, Jitsui paid more attention to him than any of the others.  He could tell that most of their peers were discounting both him and Hatano at a glance.  In Jitsui’s opinion, that showed a distinct lack of intelligence on their part, and they should have been cut immediately for their stupidity.  Because Yuuki hadn’t just brought them there to pad out the numbers.  He’d have just brought in more college graduates if all he wanted was meat to cut.  They were the youngest, yes, but as there were only two of them, it should have been clear they’d been handpicked.  Jitsui’s motives in approaching Hatano had been less about wanting to be around someone his own age, and more about allying himself with someone who he expected to be around for the entire duration of their training.

            It didn’t take him long to see how Hatano had gotten his invitation.  His heavy-lidded, almost sleepy expression hid a mind like a steel trap.  During their lectures, he spent most of his time leaning back with his hands folded behind his head, looking bored and not taking notes.  Then he went and aced every test.  And that wasn’t even the impressive part.

            When it came to combat, Hatano reigned supreme.  Except, almost no one else noticed that he was so far ahead of everyone else that he was practically toying with all of them, every bout, every sparring match, every time, without exception.  He matched his opponents’ speeds and technique levels, scaling himself back perfectly, so that it appeared he was exactly on their level.  Everyone who fought him felt like they had a chance.  But they never did.  Hatano came out ahead against every opponent he was matched up against.  But it seemed to all of them that he only barely just came out ahead, and that he wasn’t anything too special.  They could have beaten him if they’d put in just a little more effort, and next time they would.  Hatano was smart enough to know that it’s the nails that stick out that get hammered back in. 

            Jitsui was surprised to find how much he found himself liking Hatano.  The younger boy was cynical and cheeky, while Jitsui himself was quiet and polite.  But Hatano curbed his cynicism a bit around Jitsui, and didn’t try to provoke him into any arguments.  He seemed to enjoy being around Jitsui too, and took to spending time with him outside of classes.  It had been years since Jitsui had any friends.  He hadn’t become close to a single person since coming back to Japan.  He’d left all his friends in Hawaii.  But he remembered what it was like to have friends, and Hatano started more and more to remind him of that. 

            Hatano had some shadows in his soul.  He did his best to hide them, but if you looked closely, you could see the signs.  Like how he avoided all physical contact, outside of fights, whenever he could.  And when he couldn’t, he tensed, like he was just waiting for you to hurt him.  Jitsui knew what those reactions were a sign of.  Hatano’s parents had beaten him.  Abuse that had clearly gone beyond his martial arts training.  Or perhaps even been the cause of whatever fanatical training regiments he put himself through to reach his current level.  Jitsui didn’t know.  And Hatano was hardly going to volunteer that information.

 

* * *

 

            Weeks passed.  Many trainees were cut.  Jitsui and Hatano remained.  And Jitsui noticed something subtly changing in Hatano as he spent more time around him.  It was hard to pin down in words what it was, exactly.  It was kind of like something about him lightened a little.  But only when he was around Jitsui.  And it didn’t make him lose any of his edge. 

            It was amazing, Jitsui thought, how few people had actually realized that Hatano was far and away the best fighter in the whole group.  They should have figured it out, by the simple fact that he still hadn’t lost a fight.  Even when he sparred against opponents much larger and heavier than him, who should have had an overwhelming advantage.  Jitsui thought that maybe some of the other, more dense students were finally starting to figure it out when a man named Narimo asked Hatano for help with some knife disarming techniques.  Jitsui was a little surprised, and a little annoyed when Hatano agreed.  He didn’t understand why he was annoyed.  But for some reason he hadn’t felt like sticking around to watch or help with Narimo’s private lessons.  Instead he chose to go to read in an alcove.  But he found he really couldn’t concentrate on his book.

            “Jitsui?”

            He looked up, recognizing the voice.  Fukumoto.  One of the tallest trainees.  Quiet, but friendly.  Usually beat Jitsui in sparring bouts, but not all the time.  Always lost to Hatano in sparring bouts, but lost with grace.  Not on great terms with Jitsui, but not an enemy either.

            “Hello Fukumoto,” Jitsui greeted him.  “Can I help you?”

            “I thought you should know,” Fukumoto told him.  “Zakurai’s trying to pick a fight with Hatano.”

            “No one ever accused Zakurai of being smart,” said Jitsui, as he mentally ran down his checklist about Zakurai.  A brute and a bully.  Taller than Fukumoto.  More muscled too.  Did not take losing to Hatano well.  Would probably have a black eye come tomorrow.

            “I think he seriously means to do harm to Hatano,” Fukumoto said, his tone changing slightly. 

            Jitsui looked at him oddly.  He had thought Fukumoto was one of the more capable students.  Yet it seemed he hadn’t grasped just how far beyond them Hatano was in martial arts capabilities either. 

            Jitsui closed his book and stood.  “I suppose it will be fun to watch Hatano break his face in.”

            He didn’t think Hatano would need help.  And he wasn’t worried about him.  At least not until he saw Hatano wearing a grimace of pain, facing off against not just Zakurai, but Narimo as well. 

            That’s when he moved without thinking.  He didn’t consciously make the decision to break Zakurai’s leg.  He just felt a wild surge of protectiveness and a flash of anger, and then Zakurai was on the ground screaming, his shin bone snapped and puncturing his skin, jutting out of his body.

            Then he looked up to meet Hatano’s expression.  What he saw there surprised him.  Because there was no surprise on Hatano’s face.  He looked pleased, but not astonished.  Mostly, he looked like it was perfectly natural to find Jitsui here, right now, when right when he needed help.

            “Hi Jitsui,” Hatano said casually.

            Huh, thought Jitsui, realizing just now what he suspected Hatano already had known.  I guess we’ve become friends.

            “Hi Hatano,” he returned the greeting.  Then he looked at Narimo.  Stupid, pathetic Narimo who he hadn’t liked to begin with, since the older man had been encroaching on his time with his his favorite fellow trainee. Foolish, short-sighted Narimo who had turned on Hatano like a stray dog, siding with Zakurai, thinking they could cut Hatano out of the competition.  Soon to be dead Narimo who had dared raise a hand against Jitsui’s friend.  “Hello Narimo.”

            Narimo’s face drained of color and he looked at Jitsui in horror.

            “Hey.  Wait.   I didn’t mean anything by it,” he pleaded.

            Jitsui feigned innocent confusion.  “You didn’t mean anything by what?”

            “Any of it!  I swear.  It was a game.  Like Miyoshi said.  It was just a joke,” said Narimo.

            “Jitsui,” Miyoshi then said.  “Hatano.  If I could make a suggestion?”

            Jitsui didn’t like Miyoshi per say.  He didn’t dislike him.  Nor was he completely indifferent to him.  Perhaps it would be most accurate to say that he was wary of Miyoshi.  The older trainee was among the smartest in their class, and the most cunning.  And Jitsui was smart enough to know that those traits didn’t always go hand in hand, but when they did, it was best to watch out.  More than that, Miyoshi was good enough in a fight that even Hatano was wary of him. 

            But right here, right now, he had clearly taken Hatano’s side.  Jitsui had seen that at a glance, even over his blinding anger, when he’d taken in the situation.  Miyoshi had been standing almost beside Hatano, just half a step in front of him, and facing down Zakurai and Narimo.

            More evidence that Miyoshi was smart.  He’d made the right choice.  And Jitsui guessed that earned him a little bit of regard right now, at the very least.

            “Of course,” he said sweetly and graciously.

            “Let him go,” said Miyoshi.

            Let him go?

            Oh no.

            Sorry, Miyoshi, but Narimo had to pay.

            Jitsui thought he’d start with his hands.  He was looking forward to the sounds his fingers would make as Jitsui snapped them one by one.  He would deal with the consequences for maiming two students when he had to.

            Except. 

            Oh.  Clever, Miyoshi.  Yes, Jitsui could see where he was going with this now.  Even though Miyoshi hadn’t said anything more than to let Narimo go, Jitsui could now understand his reasoning.  And a look at Hatano showed that Hatano did as well.

            They could use a good scapegoat.

            So Jitsui looked at Narimo and smiled so brightly that his eyes crinkled at the corners.  “Goodbye, Narimo.”

            Narimo’s hasty exit was ruined by him falling flat on his face, tripping over Hatano’s foot.

            “It was so very kind of you,” said Hatano.  “Helping me work on techniques for counter sneak attacks.”  Then the youngest trainee lowered his voice to a whisper, and Jitsui barely heard him add, “I’ll make sure to return the favor for you.”

            Narimo’s eyes showed white all around as he tried to scramble away.  Jitsui let him reach the door before stopping him one final time.

            “One more thing, Narimo-kun,” said Jitsui.  _“Never sleep again.”_

 

* * *

 

            Zakurai was still rolling on the floor, howling, and bleeding.  But it was amazing how easy it was to tune him out. 

            “Well, I really should go report this,” said Miyoshi, shoving his hands into his pockets.  “Zakurai needs medical attention.  Narimo really did a number on his leg.”

            “Do you really think Lt. Colonel Yuuki is going to believe it?” asked Hatano.

            Miyoshi looked at him like he’d said something extremely amusing, then hunched over slightly, chuckling.  “Of course not.  Narimo wasn’t going to make it through next week’s cuts, even with your help.  Chances of him managing to break Zakurai’s leg so cleanly are zero percent.  But whether Lt. Colonel Yuuki believes what I say is of little consequence.  It’s whether or not he accepts it that we have to worry about.  Which, I’m sure he will.”

            “Aside from having so many witnesses reporting the same thing about this incident, he clearly doesn’t like Zakurai,” Fukumoto said.

            “Witnesses?  Like hell!” screamed Zakurai and he zeroed in his glare on Jitsui.  “I’ll recant everything you say!  I’ll tell Yuuki the truth about what you did, you little brat!”

            “You are clearly in shock,” Miyoshi said.  “Your word cannot be trusted.”

            “So shut up,” said Hatano.  “You’re annoying.”

            Zakurai spit curses at them and glared death at the two youngest.  “You think you’re special?  You think you can make it to the end?  You won’t last much longer!  Look at you!  You look like pathetic children.  There’s no place for you in this field!”

            Miyoshi started laughing again, hunching his shoulders slightly, trying to hide it, but failing.  “I’m sorry.  I just thought everyone who was that stupid had been cut already.”

            “What?” Zakurai didn’t get it.  But Miyoshi obviously did.

            “The fact that they look like children is not a strike against them, fool,” said Miyoshi.  “It rather makes them invaluable.  And if you look at the skills that the two of them had coming into this, you’d see that they were clearly earmarked for success from the start.  Or did you think it was a coincidence that the only two high school students in our entire class have been outscoring university graduates consistently since day one?”

            Zakurai spluttered.  Jitsui glanced at Fukumoto out of curiosity, and saw him looking contemplative.  He took that to mean Fukumoto hadn’t put this all together yet, but could accept that it was true, once Miyoshi laid the pieces out for him.  Zakurai, on the other hand, couldn’t, judging by his renewed hale of curses.

            Jitsui supposed that this distinction was what really separated Zakurai from Fukumoto.  Fukumoto might not have worked it out on his own, but when faced with the truth, convoluted though it was, he recognized it.  And next time, he probably would be able to work out similar deductions on his own, thanks to Miyoshi’s impromptu lesson. 

            But Zakurai just flatly denied it.  He refused to even consider it.  He was far too close minded.

            And he had a broken leg.

            That separated him from Fukumoto too.

            “Lt. Colonel Yuuki scouted them out specially,” Miyoshi spoke over Zakurai’s raving swears, like a diligent teacher determined to finish the lesson.  “He knew he was going to need people who looked particularly young, and so he took it upon himself to find several who he knew already possessed the physical abilities and mental capacities that he needed them to have.  Their completing the first half of this training is nothing more than a formality.  And, I suppose, a failsafe to keep the rest of us who make it through to the second half from resenting them and slowing down our ability to function as a team.  Since suffering together breeds camaraderie, or some such.”

            “You’re full of it, Miyoshi!  And you’re full of yourself!  You pig-faced bastard!”

            The insult to Miyoshi’s looks made a muscle in his jaw twitch.  Rather than respond to the insult, he just offered one of his own.

            “I suppose I wasted my time, trying to educate you,” said Miyoshi.  “After all, after dogs reach a certain age, they can’t learn new tricks.”

            He started for the door, giving a lazy little wave to Fukumoto, Jitsui, and Hatano.

            “I’m going to report this incident.  I’ll trust you to get the story straight, if Lt. Colonel Yuuki bothers making any inquiries.”

            “For what it’s worth, Miyoshi,” Hatano cheekily called after him, “I don’t think you’re pig-faced.  In fact, I think you look very pretty!”

            Miyoshi took the playful dig in stride.  His shoulders were shaking with suppressed chuckles as he left the training room.

 

* * *

 

            Narimo confessed to breaking Zakurai’s leg when Yuuki called him into his office.  After that, it was case closed.  Yuuki didn’t even bother getting testimony from the other “witnesses.”  As Miyoshi had expected, he’d been looking for an excuse to get rid of Zakurai and Narimo both. 

            There were however some unexpected consequences to those events.  Somehow Jitsui and Hatano ended up being pulled into Miyoshi’s group.  That wasn’t a bad thing.  In fact, it turned out to be a really good thing.  Miyoshi might have been the most cunning out of their whole class.  He clearly had an eye for talent.

            Jitsui was wary at first.  He hadn’t come here expecting to make friends, and now he had Hatano, which was more than he could have hoped for.  Trying to take too much and be greedy would end badly.  He didn’t need more than he had now.  But somehow, the others in the group wormed their way inside his guard.  There were a few exceptions.  Megami had plenty of book smarts but couldn’t reason very well.  He was one of the dwindling few left who still didn’t understand how Hatano and Jitsui were still there.  He didn’t like them much, and in turn Jitsui and Hatano didn’t like him.  And a man named Hourai was clearly jealous of them both.  But the others, like Amari, Odagiri, Tazaki, Kaminaga, and of course Miyoshi and Fukumoto, they were good.  It was easier to get on the same page as them. So before long, Jitsui started to think that yeah, maybe he could get to be friends with them too.  And in time he did.

            But they didn’t replace Hatano.  He had a place all his own in Jitsui’s world 

            Jitsui had never had a best friend before.  But now he couldn’t imagine life without his. 

 

* * *

 

            Their training had started in the spring since that’s when the universities started.  It helped give them better cover.  The program lasted all through the summer too, and was due to end in the late fall.  That, Yuuki informed them, was when they would graduate and their organization would officially form. 

            But as that day drew closer, Jitsui found himself falling prey once again to his old problem.  His shivering.

            It started when the leaves began to change color, and the air grew crisper and cooler.  It always did.  And at first it wasn’t so bad.  It didn’t keep him awake, so he hadn’t realized it had already started.  But one morning he woke up and found an extra blanket had been tossed over him as he slept.  And he noticed that Amari was down a blanket.

            He tried to return it.  But the next morning he woke up and it was back, along with another blanket.  One from Fukumoto.

            After that was when it got cold enough to make him start losing sleep.  And he realized that it was making the others lose sleep too.  He could hear them tossing and turning in their sleep as his teeth chattered throughout the night.  And though he did his best to muffle the sound, he knew it wasn’t enough. 

            Amari cornered him several mornings later, eyes full of the kind of concern that you only got from a self-appointed big brother.  “Are you sick, Jitsui?  If you are, you can say so, you know.  They’ll let you get medical attention.  You might not remember, because you weren’t hanging around us a few months then, but when that stomach virus was going around, they let us go see a doctor.  We’re not expected to be invincible.”

            “I’m not sick,” said Jitsui, well aware that everyone was listening in.  “I just don’t like the cold.”

            “That’s going to be a problem,” said Kaminaga.  “One of our final tests is swimming a mile in the ocean at night.  And it’s going to be really cold by then.”

            “I can deal with the cold,” said Jitsui.  “Especially if I can get up and move.  I just don’t sleep that well when it’s cold.  And it doesn’t seem to matter how many blankets I have.  I’ve tried bundling up for years, but it’s never enough.”

            He looked away embarrassed.

            “I am sorry for disturbing your sleep.”

 

* * *

 

            The weather broke that very night.  The temperatures plummeted. And Jitsui found himself curled up as tight as he could, jaw clenched to try to stop his teeth from chattering, shaking to the point where he was nearly convulsing, because he was so, so cold, and he knew that there would be no getting to sleep that night.

            The bed next to his creaked.  He heard Hatano stand up, and felt bad.  He’d woken his best friend.  Or else kept him from getting to sleep at all. 

            Then he heard another noise.  Blankets being pulled off Hatano’s bed.  Jitsui grimaced and started to uncurl, because he thought he knew where this was going, even though he’d told them just that morning that it didn’t matter how many blankets he had.

            The weight of Hatano’s blankets, all of them, dropped over him before he could manage to fully sit up.  Moving was a little hard when he was shivering so hard.  But he struggled until he was upright, and could stare at Hatano.

            “Wh-wh-what-t-t-t are y-y-y-you –”

            “Scooch over,” whispered Hatano, spreading the blankets more evenly over the bed, then pulling up Jitsui’s blankets so he could crawl under too. 

            “Wh-wh-what-t-t?  Hat-t-tan-n-no –”

            “It’s too cold, dammit,” Hatano said softly.  “We’ll be warmer if we share.”

            Jistui felt an unexpected rush of blood to his face.  “B-b-but –”

            “You don’t mind, do you?” In the moonlight he could see Hatano looking at him with big eyes.  He almost looked innocent and genuine that way.  But Jitsui wasn’t fooled.  Hatano wasn’t doing this for his own benefit.  He was doing it for Jitsui.  He was pretending to be selfish to benefit his friend.

            “Y-you d-don’t h-have t-t-t-to d-do th-this f-f-for m-me.”

            “Mm, I didn’t get a word of that, but I’m taking it as acceptance.”  Hatano’s cheeky smirk belied his words as he nestled in and tucked the covers in under himself, sealing off himself and Jitsui off from the cold on that side of the bed.  “Thanks, Jitsui.  Good night.”

            Jitsui didn’t know whether to huff or laugh.  But he was too cold to do either.  Cold and numb.  So he nestled back down beneath the covers too, and tried to make sense of this new development.

            Hatano had been right though.  Sharing did make it warmer, since they weren’t just sharing blankets, but also body heat.  Jitsui had theorized that his own circulation must slow down in his sleep, which was why he got cold so easily.  But with Hatano beside him, the bed was actually warming up.  It was like lying next to a sunbeam.  Unconsciously, Jitsui nestled closer.

            This . . . this was nice.

            Gradually, his shivers lessened, then stopped altogether.  And around them, in the other beds, he heard the other trainees stop tossing and turning.  Without Jitsui making so much noise and keeping them awake, they were finally able to get to sleep.  Soon, even Hatano’s breathing changed, and Jitsui knew his best friend had drifted off too.  For the first time in what felt like forever, Jitsui was finally warm.

            He edged closer to Hatano.  Just a bit more.  Because he didn’t want to make this weird.  But Hatano was radiating so much warmth and it was pulling Jitsui to him like a drug.  He didn’t mean to get too close.  But before he knew it, he was right beside Hatano, so close that there was a scant inch stopping them from touching.

            That’s close enough, Jitsui told himself.  He didn’t want to get too close and make things awkward.  And the last thing he wanted was for Hatano to get uncomfortable and freak out if he woke up and Jitsui was too close.  He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize their friendship.

            Jitsui yawned.  Sleep was starting to call him now too.  Now that he was finally warm.  He closed his eyes.  And then he nuzzled just a little bit closer.  And when he fell asleep, his dreams were full of sunshine.

 

* * *

 

            They woke up in a tangle, sort of.  Jitsui’s cheek was pressed against Hatano’s shoulder.  His opposite shoulder to the one that was closet to Jitsui's half of the bed.  Which meant that sometime in his sleep, Jitsui had crawled halfway on top of Hatano and sprawled his body over his.  Hatano was lying on his back, one arm wrapped around Jitsui’s waist, the other clutching a handful of Jitsui’s sleep shirt.  

            Jitsui didn’t wake up all at once.  He drifted back into consciousness slowly.  It was a change from how he usually woke up.  Since he usually woke up shivering, and scrunched up, back aching from being curled into a ball, trying to stay warm.  He was comfortable for a change, despite being in an odd position and having a pillow that was firm instead of soft.  Even when his pillow shifted slightly beneath him before going still again.  He still thought that this was nice.

            “How cute,” someone commented.  Amari, he thought.  The older spies were amused about something.

            Jitsui was too sleepy to care what.  He closed his eyes again and pressed his face against his pillow.

            “Aww.  They’re adorable.  Really.”  Tazaki.

            “Someone go get one of the cameras from the classroom.”  Kaminaga.

            Beneath Jitsui, his pillow rumbled slightly.  “This is the first good night’s sleep he’s gotten in weeks.  Leave it alone.”

            Jitsui’s eyes opened.  He blinked against a white, soft worn night shirt.  The voice of his pillow had been Hatano’s.  Which meant that his pillow was . . .

            He lifted his head slowly, dreading what he would see, as he realized exactly the position he was in.  His movements caught Hatano’s attention, and his friend looked at him through heavily lidded sleepy eyes. 

            “Hatano . . .” Jitsui started uncertainly.  He didn’t know how to explain this.  “I –”

            “I’m going back to sleep,” said Hatano.  “Those freaks can go for a pretraining jog if they want, but it’s got nothing to do with me.”

            Then he closed his eyes.

            He released the handful of Jitsui’s shirt that he’d been unconsciously clutching.  But kept his other arm wrapped around Jitsui, essentially holding him in place.

            Jitsui flushed but didn’t struggle.  He was still sleepy too.  Another hour of sleep . . .  that sounded heavenly.  And he was so warm where he was. 

            “Sunshine,” he muttered against Hatano’s shoulder.

            “Hm?”

            “You.  Remind me of sunshine,” said Jitsui. 

            “Mm,” Hatano responded, clearly too tired to come up with a better response.

            They lay in silence for a few minutes.  But Jitsui could tell Hatano hadn’t fallen back asleep.  He just lay there, breathing steadily, but not the way he would if he’d dozed off.

            “Hatano?”

            “Hm?”

            “Is this okay?”

            “Mmhm.”

            “You’re not freaked out?  It’s not too awkward?” Because Hatano still normally avoided physical contact as much as he could outside of fights. And he still tensed so quickly, it was nearly a flinch when someone casually touched him. But right now . . .

            Jitsui felt a hand settle on top of his head, and pet him a few times, as if he was a cat.  Somehow he got the feeling Hatano wasn’t actually conscious of what he was doing.

            “It’s fine,” Hatano said sleepily.  “We’re friends, yeah?”

            Jitsui was a bit out of practice at being a friend.  But he was pretty sure normal friend behavior didn’t include this.  But then, neither he nor Hatano was really normal.  So maybe this really was okay.

            He wasn’t really thinking when he wrapped an arm around Hatano, but Hatano didn’t seem to mind.  He absently patted Jitsui’s head again, and Jitsui felt himself leaning into the touch.  And when he inhaled, he realized that Hatano even smelled like sunshine.  Warm, and light, and airy.  Funny how he’d never noticed that before.

            “I don’t want to get up,” Jitsui mumbled, voice muffled against Hatano’s shirt.

            Then Hatano’s arm tightened around him slightly. 

            “Then don’t.  We’ve got another hour before we have to be awake.”

          They both were silent again.  Then a minute later, Hatano sighed, and his breathing changed.  He'd drifted off once again.  And Jitsui knew he wasn't far behind.  He lay there, just a few minutes more, listening to his friend's heartbeat, and let it lull him back to sleep.

           

* * *

 

Notes:

Am I the kind of person who looks at pictures of kittens and baby bunnies to cheer myself up when I'm feeling depressed?  Yes I am.

 

A very kind and talented fan artist named Jimmi has blessed us with fan art for this fic!  [http://i-dedicate-this-kill-to-the-fans.tumblr.com/post/146797301984/after-i-read-this-fanfic-i-couldnt-resist-drawing ](http://i-dedicate-this-kill-to-the-fans.tumblr.com/post/146797301984/after-i-read-this-fanfic-i-couldnt-resist-drawing)Thank you Jimmi!  You're amazing!


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